City News

Weekend Power Outage

On Saturday, May 20, 2017 at approximately 3:00 pm the City’s downtown area and the surrounding neighborhoods, click here to view the map, experienced a power outage. Starting at 6:15 pm power was restored in phases, with all power restored by 6:44 pm.

The Pacific Power (PPL) substation on Nevada Street experienced a catastrophic equipment failure (capacitor bank failure). The PPL Nevada Street substation is one of three delivery points of BPA power to the City. As a result of the Nevada Street substation failure, the City lost service to the downtown and surrounding area.

Initial information from PPL indicated an unknown time to repair. City crews determined switching the three affected feeders to another substation would be the best/fastest solution. City crews worked safely and efficiently to switch the affected feeders from the PPL Nevada Street substation to the BPA Mountain Avenue substation. The switching process required a methodical execution of switching orders combined with a strong coordination of crew in the field. Power was restored in three phases as each of the three affected feeders were re-energized.